And this excerpt from a review by M. D. Aeschliman
in the National Review of my book, Moral Agents:
“Lest anyone suspect Mendelson of filiopietism toward
Trilling, Columbia, or the ‘humanities,’ let it be said
that - despite his own professorship - his portrait of Trilling
is very hostile, andhe shows no loyalty to the tradition
of the teaching of the humanities pioneered at Columbia after
World War I by John Erskine (1879-1951) and developed with
doggedness and distinction over the last century by Mark
Van Doren, Trilling, Jacques Barzun, and Edward W. Tayler...”

And these observations by Virginia Woolf:
“Whether we gain or not by this habit of profuse communication
it is not for us to say.” (Jacob’s Room, 1922)
“The conduct of affairs has passed from the hands of individuals
to the hands of committees.” (“The London Scene,” 1931)
“the present discordant and distracted twitter” (Reviewing, 1939)